


Like the Desert Keeps Bones

by sundogsailor



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alcohol, Explicit Consent, F/F, Hate Sex, Light Dom/sub, Non-Consensual Kissing, Romantic Friendship, but very briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 22:51:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10523571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundogsailor/pseuds/sundogsailor
Summary: These aching, inappropriate feelings should’ve stayed shuttered up in the small hours of the night aboard the Falcon, where Rey could assume that the half-fantasies she'd entertained would never be real and didn’t matter.Phasma smirks, then. And Rey suddenly wants to scream.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Two notes: both parties involved in sex in this are at least somewhat inebriated, so although explicit consent is established between them they're both making decisions that they probably wouldn't sober. Also, hate sex in general really isn't the healthiest, so just heads up for everything involved with that.
> 
> Thank you to [theoriginalcaptainlina](https://theoriginalcaptainlina.tumblr.com) for beta reading!

 

When Rey first catches a glimpse of that glinting silver armor, of the cross-slung cape flapping from strapping shoulders, of _her_ , the Stormtrooper captain, it’s punctuated by a rolling clap of thunder.

It’s been raining for days now, turning the once-mossy ground beneath her feet into a sluice of gravity-drawn water and treacherous mud. Rey slips on it as she runs, quiet and low to the ground, the slaps of their steps through puddles and muck drowned out by the ambient beating of drops. The torrent plasters her clothes against her body and she pushes a handful of sopping hair back over her head, trembling as a shiver runs over her arms. They lost their rain gear and extra packs yesterday evening. It’s cold, but they’ll make it. They’re so close.

She’ll never get used to water falling from the sky, she thinks, tumbling down a ridge and skirting quickly around the root-held embankment. The desert had burned too hot and too long in her blood for that. Up the next hill and she stops, drops low, and catches her breath. The clouds rumble.

Finn lowers down beside her, only a second behind. “There,” he points, indicating a gray shape rising up through the trunks and foliage ahead of them. It’s hazy through the rain, out past the treeline.

“That’s it,” she confirms, the installation radiating with the life of its inhabitants when she closes her eyes and reaches out through the Force. It’s sizeable, but not so large that its presence is out of place on this backwater planet. Other glimmers of life move around them, small and faint for the skittering things tucked in hiding from the storm, brighter for people.

“Rey! Stormtroopers,” Finn hisses, his warm hand clapping down on her back. She feels it too, and hears it, the tromping of boots coming through the woods towards them.

“Over there,” she signals, and they dash over the rise, skidding to plaster themselves against the wrenched-up root crown of a fallen tree. She grabs the gnarled wood with one hand and pulls herself up to peer out from the cover, wanting to visually verify the patrol. Her other hand is clamped reflexively around Finn’s arm, where she feels the muscles twitch all the way up from his trigger finger. He has his blaster rifle poised at the ready.

A group of water-washed white helmets poke up above the mud of the hill, the Stormtroopers advancing up the gulley the pair had just vacated. Their demeanor is different than the other patrols she and Finn have evaded on their way here: more attentive, more tactical. She swears silently under her breath. Signs of their movements must have been noticed at some point during their approach. She prays to whoever’s out there that the squadron keeps moving, that the good luck that’s graced this mission so far continues. She doesn’t want to fight if she doesn’t have to.

She turns back to Finn, who’s found his own vantage over the roots, just in time to see his face drop.

“What?” she hisses.

“Oh, no no no,” he intones, shaking his head in consternation. “Look,” he gestures. “I thought we took care of her on Starkiller, when it blew.”

“Captain Phasma?” Rey gasps, and snaps to look back to the gulley. Sure enough, one of the mud-speckled bucketheads is chromed-out and half a head taller than the rest. A crack of lightning illuminates the gray of the day somewhere in the distance, momentarily flaring her armor past the brightest bright.

“This is bad. Really bad,” Finn breathes.

They lock eyes and nod, an unspoken agreement of _we need to hurry_ passing between them. The next minute passes slowly, like a strained cable that might fray and snap at any moment. As soon as the Stormtroopers pass out of range they peel off from the deadfall and keep running, splattering themselves with yet more mud as they dip and weave through the weather and foliage.

They break from the forest and make it across the field undetected. Finn overrides a maintenance door with a dose of cunning and pinch of brute force.

They get in. They get the data core, that crucial codex that General Organa needs, the one the Resistance spent weeks planning how to seize.

And they get out.

By this point, however, she and Finn have managed to trip several alarms. Rey pounds out through the soggy grass at full speed, codex clutched in hand, aiming for the treeline as blaster fire sizzles over their heads. Finn is shouting into the comm, calling for Poe and Chewie and the emergency evac they’d known they’d probably need. Almost a week’s worth of patience and discretion had been required to successfully approach the installation, but any more finesse would be wasted now.

With a grunt and a splash, Finn goes down.

“Finn!” Rey shouts, wheeling around to help, the worst flashing to mind. But he’s already scrambling back up, accelerating towards her.

“I’m fine,” he pants. “Keep going!”

But for a split second, she can’t. Over Finn’s shoulder, through eyes half-squinted against the beat of the rain, she sees her: cape flapping in the storm breeze, blaster rifle leveled, her stride purposeful and unaffected by recoil as she fires at a run. More lightning cracks in the distance.

Rey yelps and ducks, the bolt whizzing past far too close for comfort. Finn grabs her by the hand and they go, his inertia kick-starting hers until they’re both flat-out sprinting. The sky rumbles again and Rey suddenly realizes that it’s not thunder this time but the roar of landing thrusters overhead, slowing a ship from its breakneck atmospheric entry. She looks up just in time to catch it soar overhead and thank the Force, it’s the _Falcon_ , lowering her cargo ramp before she’s even set down. It gives them the burst of adrenaline they need to push a little more, just a little more, until they’re under the hull and then slipping on the metal of the incline up.

Her hand finds Chewbacca’s and he pulls her in the rest of the way, and she tumbles down alongside Finn. The Wookiee warbles urgently, shouldering his bowcaster and firing another shot that blows an advancing Stormtrooper into the air. The few TIE fighters stationed at the base will be airborne soon, he’s saying. Rey knows.

“Go!” She shouts, loud enough to reach Poe in the cockpit, and feels the lurch as they leave the ground. Phasma is still advancing, undeterred by the flaring thrusters. Rey can’t unfix her eyes from the woman until the loading ramp pressurizes shut, sealing out the field and the storm entirely.

She pulls herself up on shaky legs as the shield generators hum softly on, still shot through with adrenaline, but verging into the wary happiness that always comes with the imminent completion of a mission. She hugs Finn tight as they feel the jump, launching out into hyperspace and towards home.

 

 

 

She goes to relieve Poe when she emerges from the head with clean skin and dry clothes, post-exhausted nap. He gives her a smile and a clap on the shoulder before heading for his rack, determined to catch some sleep before they make it back to base. It’ll be several hours yet.

Eventually Finn comes up to join her, settling in the vacant copilot’s seat with a cup of something hot and spicy smelling, probably tea.

“I’m glad we made it out alright,” she greets, contemplating the blur of hyperspace. There isn’t much else to do right now besides monitor the various blinking readouts and gauges.

“That’s an understatement,” Finn chuckles softly, taking a sip of the drink before his tone grows more serious. “Running into Phasma was the last thing I was expecting.”

“Tell me about her,” she asks, pulling her feet up onto the chair and wrapping her arms around her shins. It’s an ingrained habit, one that General Leia has given her disparaging motherly looks about many a time. But Finn doesn’t mind, and he’s all but family now.

“You already know most of it.”

“But she’s back from the dead, now. I need to know more. We all do.”

Finn thinks for a moment. “Most ‘Troopers don’t question things, you know? I didn’t, not really, not until what happened on Jakku. I looked up to her as a cadet. I knew I had a chance at being like her one day, with my evaluation scores. I could be a leader, someone who did his job so well that others would look up to me, too. In the end it came down to the fact that I just cared too much about people, and not enough about the Order’s brand of honor.”

“You admired her?” Rey asks, surprised. She hadn’t known that Finn had respected the woman as more than just another superior, once.

“Yeah,” he sighs, and leans his head back against the seat. “Sometimes I wonder if anyone human ever lived under all that chrome. If there was, she probably… wiped herself out a long time ago.” He grimaces. “Reconditioning. She was egalitarian like that.”

“That's... I can't imagine,” Rey frowns, and there’s a long silence. Finn changes the subject and their conversation quickly twists and turns down more lighthearted paths, ending up on the slapdash Binary lessons he's been getting from Poe and a very impatient BB-8. Soon the dregs of his tea have chilled past palatability and he pulls a face when he tastes it, drawing a laugh out of her.

“I’m gonna go wash this,” he says, standing to leave. “I’ll get Poe up in an hour so you two can land this sorry bird. Someone else can take Chewie, I don’t want a hundred and fifty kilos of startled Wookiee in my face ever again.”

“Thanks, Finn. You get some rest, too.” He pads out, and then there’s nothing left to do again but stare at the stars and ponder, so she does exactly that.

 

 

\---

 

 

The second time Rey encounters Phasma, they dance.

The hair on her neck and forearms shivers on end as she eases into a crouch behind the corner of the stone outbuilding, flicking a stray rock out of her boot and adjusting the heavy jacket over her shoulders. A cold breeze rustles the horizon-encompassing brown prairie into undulating waves, whipping up around the side of the structure before it hits her. Echoes of nearby blaster fire cut through the brisk air and cloudless blue sky, seeming closer than they really are.

She ducks out and keeps moving, darting from shadow to shadow further into the deserted town. If she’s timed it right, she’ll be in position to complete her end of the mission before the First Order’s troops even realize they’ve overextended.

“All units, this is Black Leader,” her headset crackles, picking up Poe’s radio chatter from somewhere far up in the stratosphere. “Check in.”

His squadron sounds off as she creeps past an old house into the back-alley portion of a once-bustling marketplace, now all half-broken carts and stands woven into a dilapidated maze. She hunkers down again, low, always low, behind a fluttering display of bone-white linens, the twin stars of the system casting a confusion of shadows and sun-glints over her body and the pebbly dirt beneath her feet. She presses the grubby silver headset closer into her ear.

“Black Leader, this is Falcon One,” she transmits.

“Falcon One, go ahead.”

“I’m in position.” The matte-grey hulls of the transport ships rest not fifty meters away through intermittent gaps in the fabric, their hulking, utilitarian forms only lightly guarded by a group of Stormtroopers dotted about the square.

“Roger, we’ll give you fifteen before we light it up. Got that, buddy?”

“Loud and clear,” comes Finn, crackling in over the blasts from the other edge of town. He’s confident about the diversion and so are the troops he’s leading, a strong glow emanating through the Force. Poe closes the channel.

Rey takes a deep breath of chill air, letting it prickle and expand in her lungs, and goes. There are five ships, and if she’s smart about it, she can disable them in half the time Poe gave her. Intercepting intelligence about this planetside stop had been a windfall for the Resistance, a chance to set a trap for the Order and capture as many assets as they could. The fact that Phasma herself was in the contingent had only sweetened the pot.

She sprints silently behind a pair of ‘Troopers and skids into cover, the blind spot beneath the nearest transport’s aft landing gear. This is where she needs to be. The hull is still warm under her cold fingertips where they stick out from cut-off gloves, its material not yet completely cooled from entry but safe to handle. She tucks herself closer under the craft and starts working, gutting the thrust conversion drives from their external access panel. The Order is still using decades-old technology, easy to get at and easy to ruin.

In under a minute the compartment is sealed back up, and Rey ghosts to the next transport. Her senses are flared and adrenaline thrums lowly in her veins, making her twitch at each bootfall of the patrolling guards, but with every system disabled her confidence grows. She’s just about to slip across the widest and final gap between ships when she hears footsteps, her breath stuttering to a halt as she freezes prone in the shadowed dirt under the hull.

Chromed boots crunch into view, trailed by the edge of a black and crimson cape. The glint of the sun off them would be blinding if not for the patina of reddish black dust clinging on the material. They stop, turn, and then two more white sets join them. Those ones snap to attention, heels clapping together.

“Report,” comes a command, deep but feminine even through the mechanical-sounding filtration of a helmet. It’s unexpectedly languid despite the formally clipped accent. She’s not more than a meter away, close enough that Rey could easily snag an ankle if she were suicidal. Her heart slams, and when she swallows it’s as though someone has stuck cotton in her mouth.

“No sign, Captain,” one of the ‘Troopers responds. “Everything seems to be in order.”

“Keep searching,” Phasma commands. “Something else is going on here.”

She hears the snap of salutes and two replies of “Yes, Captain,” before the ‘Troopers march away. Phasma lingers for a moment and then follows them towards the bow of the transport, eventually disappearing. Radio chatter follows her, the exchange hinting at combat reengagement and Finn’s squad, dimming until the only noises are the whip of wind and distant rustling grass once more.

Rey waits, pulse hammering, until she’s absolutely certain the gap between ships is clear again. The Force signatures of the ‘Troopers have dispersed, although several still linger just around the corner of the transport. She carefully shifts to read the chrono on her wrist, squinting to make it out with her eyes adjusted to day glare and the chill breeze sending grit into them: four minutes left in the window Poe gave her. It’ll be close and she’ll have to be careful, but that’s nothing new. She can do it.

Another chilly breath, and she rolls out from under the hull, pushes herself up, and takes a step out from its shadow.

A blaster bolt singes past her ear.

Rey hits the frost-hard ground with a shout, rolling once and skidding up to her knees, hand going instinctively for the blaster at her hip. It’s Phasma, her stance solid and uncompromising as she trains another shot on Rey from half-behind the front of the transport. There’s no time to draw. She tumbles away again just as the ground explodes where she’d been, diving for shelter behind the final ship.

“Check the transports!” Phasma shouts, signaling to the small squadron that’s rushed to the sound of her blaster discharge. “There’s been a rat running around our ships,” she continues, and this time Rey knows it’s directed at her.

 _Shit_ , she thinks, snapping her head back from the corner and plastering herself against the exhaust ports. She can hear the Stormtrooper captain drawing closer, each step even and unhurried. She has two options: run, or fight. The next nearest point of cover is a knocked over vendor’s cart far away at the edge of the square, abandoned by the locals when they’d recognized Order ships in the atmosphere. It’s too far to make by sprinting alone.

The hilt of her saber is rough and cold under her fingers as they slip around it, smoothly unfastening it from her belt and weighing the familiar heft. She turns to face the alley between the ships and backs away with slow, calculated steps, rocking fluidly from toe to heel. Flicking the saber on is easy. Its twin green blades ignite evenly from the emitters and she twirls it, integrating it as an extension of her body itself with each gentle _vwum vwum_ as it slices through the air. Wind whips her hair around her face. She’s ready.

She deflects the first shot with ease as Phasma comes into view, ricocheting it into the sky. She’s alone in her advance, her squad taking up more sheltered positions around the ships. Rey tries to keep the distance between them even, dancing a wide circle in response to the Captain’s advances. It’s almost rhythmic, her body settling into the flow of the Force that ripples and bends in front of the bolts and responding in turn, sending each one away with a crash of energy. It’s the first thing Luke taught her to do, and she’s good at it. She manages to hit several of the other Stormtroopers with redirected shots, dropping them before they even get a chance to fire from around the transports.

They’re near the edge of the square when Phasma’s charge cylinder depletes. Rey pants from the exertion, her hot breath puffing in short-lived clouds, and lowers her saber to examine the woman. She seems disconcertingly unperturbed, a quick motion to the ‘Troopers stilling their fire.

Phasma slings the rifle over her shoulder and reaches to her hip instead, still advancing. The cape falls aside to reveal a weapon that Rey hadn’t noticed—some sort of riot baton, maybe—and she grabs it, snapping the rod out in front of her. It crackles with energy.

“Show me what you’ve got, little Jedi,” she taunts, and surges forward.

The strike crashes down into Rey’s parrying saber, and that’s when she realizes just how tall Phasma is. She looms over her, her weight oppressive, the baton reacting as another lightsaber would to Rey’s with combustive crackling. That impassive visor seems to look deep into her eyes and Rey snarls, spinning away with a backwards slash as she goes.

They clash again, a whirl of spraying sparks. Phasma is brutal, all precisely applied strength amplified by the momentum of the spinning baton. The other woman’s motions generate too many cross-ripples to track easily with the Force, and Rey realizes with a start that she must have fought—or at least trained with—Force users before. But she won’t let that make a difference. Rey never relied on the Force on Jakku, and so she doesn’t need to now. She can still beat her.

Her focus zeroes down to nothing but the physical motions, the angles and the steps and the dangerous, snapping rotation of the baton. They break away from one another for a moment, circling, skirting around a mess of a market stall and meeting again in the mouth to a side street. She feels herself overheating in her jacket, the chill-raw pink on her ears and nose heating and spreading to the rest of her face, her breath heaving now. But it’s working. She’s slowly gaining the upper hand, pressing back on the tower of a woman with each step and blow.

A whistling noise registers at the periphery of her vision and suddenly the long stone building not ten meters away explodes, sending shockwave-borne debris hurtling towards her and the Captain. It’s Poe, or Pava or Iolo, raining fire from above, right on time. She disengages and dives out of the way, throwing herself low into a break in the structure across the street only to realize that it’s actually steps, ones she tumbles down until the din of rubble fades and she rolls out the bottom.

She surges back up and it seems almost like something is _pulling_ her, drawing her through the blast as though it were only a light breeze. Phasma doesn’t take long to reappear, emerging from the steps dusty and fatigued but still moving with that lethal, quick-snap efficiency. Rey drops into a half-crouch and collects herself.

They’re in some sort of sunken courtyard now, edged with long-dead grasses and boxed in completely save for how they’d entered. Phasma twirls her baton, Rey wipes the dust from her face, and they clash again. Soon Phasma overbalances and Rey sees an opening, surging in to strike, but realizes a moment too late that the woman has only feinted with the lurch left. She brings up her saber to parry but it’s not enough time and the baton slams into her gut with a crackle. Suddenly she’s in the air.

She goes down hard, barely avoiding slicing her own leg open with her saber before it tumbles out of her hand and deactivates. She gasps for a moment, her diaphragm spasming, before the adrenaline surges back and she manages to struggle up onto an elbow. The animal part of her brain snaps into overdrive to process the slew of pain signals from her body, all clamoring in at once. She doesn’t think anything is broken, but-

“I would have expected more,” Phasma is saying as she strides through the dust towards her, “considering all the damage you’ve caused the Order.” She raises the baton. “What a shame.”

The potent pulling feeling snaps tight in Rey’s chest and she screams and _pushes_ , hurling Phasma off her feet. She just wants to be _done_ with this. There’s a satisfying crack of armor on stone when the captain slams into the opposite wall and bounces off, landing in a heap at the fringe of the papery brown grass. Rey wastes no time in scrambling up with gritted teeth and stalking towards the woman.

Phasma is rolling back up when Rey reaches her, but the Jedi will have none of it. She’s truly angry now, buzzed on more than combat adrenaline and a grim determination to destroy the Order one killer at a time. Rey whips a hand out and grabs the other woman’s wrist mid-swing, destroying her balance and twisting her into an explosive throw, laying her out on the dirt again with a final-sounding crack. The Captain groans, but stays down. Her lightsaber snaps back into her outstretched palm as she drops down to her knees over the Captain, straddling the chromed chestpiece and igniting just one blade to thrust it, barely hovering, at her black-suited throat.

She could end this now, she thinks, end it and remove Phasma from the equation entirely. Take a sort of revenge for Finn, even though she knows he doesn’t need saving. The galaxy would be better off without this woman in it. Without _any_ of them in it. Her hand trembles, so, so ready to strike Phasma down then and there—

It would be so _easy._

Rey gasps and recoils. She deactivates her saber, horrifying clarity dawning upon her. That seductive whisper of possibility was the Dark, threading around her unnoticed just as when she’d cast Kylo Ren down into the snow. Power, strength, the seduction of the kill, all on offer. But no. She won’t listen to its promises, she swears to herself. Not today, not ever; she’s seen what it can do to someone, and the people who love them.

So instead she pants, unsure of what to do. Another barrage of bombs rumbles off to the west, the second of four. She needs to get out of here soon, or risk being hit. But she can’t go yet, a long-contemplated question burning at the forefront of her mind.

What’s under that mask? Who, exactly, is this ruthless woman who’d groomed Finn and his fellow cadets to be killers, who’d pushed him too far towards something he wasn’t? Who he—before he’d gotten his name—had admired?

Phasma grunts and tries to grab at her now that she isn’t under immediate risk of decapitation, but Rey easily pins her hands above her head with a bit of Force-augmented strength and fumbles down, grimacing, to hook the back of her helmet. It comes off with a heavy yank and Rey freezes altogether, the Captain glaring up at her.

They’re blue. Her eyes, that is, and they’re _sharp_. Phasma is a striking woman, and Rey might easily even go so far as to say handsome. She must be about Poe’s age, her platinum blonde hair cropped short over her ears but still sweat-matted and dropping its fringe into its owner’s way. She’s snarling, blinking rapidly in the bright of the day without her visor and huffing cloudy breaths past Rey’s cheeks.

“Well fought, Jedi,” she growls. “Are you going to finish the job?”

“Are you asking me for death?” Rey is affronted at the implications, by the glance into how this woman must function.

Phasma barks a bitter laugh, her lips curling up into a mocking smile. “No, girl. No one wants to die. But you’d be a fool not to kill me. FN-2187 already botched it once.”

“His name is Finn,” Rey snaps. “And I’m not a _girl_.” She’d never had the luxury of a childhood, making the insinuation of being a girl now deeply uncomfortable. “Refusing to kill in anger is a virtue. If I did, I’d be no better than you.”

Phasma just chuckles again, arms jerking vigorously and forcing the smaller woman to bear down harder to maintain the restraint. She should take her in. She can’t rely on the Force to do it, the mere idea of taking someone’s agency away like that making her stomach churn. She’s had too many grim late-night conversations with Poe to even _consider_ it. There’s nothing but dry grass and crumbled flagstones in the courtyard, so a blaster to the back will have to do instead.

She lurches up and off, drawing Han’s trusty old NN-14 and leveling it at the Captain as she too comes quickly back to her feet. Another explosion rumbles through the ground, vibrating the dust up around Rey’s boots and making the desiccated plant life rustle like whispering voices. They keep coming, getting closer again in staggered succession.

“Go,” Rey orders, flicking the barrel towards the steps. Phasma slowly raises her hands and obeys. As soon as she’s able, Rey swoops in behind her to press the muzzle up against the joint in her armor at her upper back. It’s slow going, and she prods impatiently for the woman to move faster. They’re halfway up the uneven, shadowy steps when another bomb hits, this time right next to them.

She barely has enough time to understand what’s happening, her instincts and Force sensitivity kicking in to throw herself to safety before a chunk of masonry impacts where Phasma had been only a moment before. She barely catches the other woman darting forward, out of its path. It’s followed by a rain of other debris as they alley collapses around her, destabilized by the same explosion that had ripped the row-building on her right to pieces from the inside. She reels away back down into the courtyard again, watching helplessly as her only path out closes off.

And just like that, she’s lost Phasma.

Rey is breathing hard with frustration by the time she manages to climb out over the rubble, just in time to catch the puffy contrail of an Order shuttle punching out of atmo. She doesn’t realize that Poe is frantically hailing her until she’s all the way back in the market square, the concussion of sound having rendered her eardrums about as useful as ripped paper for a good ten minutes.

Finn is there waiting for her. The four ships she’d managed to disable sit earthbound and surrounded by Resistance forces, already being combed over for navigation data and comm logs. A collection of disarmed Stormtroopers waits off to the side under close watch. Rey can tell Finn wants to go to them, to speak possibility and fear and truth with them like he has with all the others they’ve captured, but for a moment his attention is only on her as she draws near across the hard-scrabble dirt of the square.

“I’m fine, Black Leader,” she assures Poe, receiving a crackling but clearly relieved whoop in response. She meets Finn’s soft eyes where he waits, smiling now with that serious half-tilt he sometimes wears, and she taps the transmit button again. “I lost Captain Phasma. I nearly had her. I’m sorry.”

Finn clasps her hand and pulls her into brief but crushing hug, dusting off the sand and bits of building from her shoulders that the cutting wind hadn’t managed to get already. They part and stand together under the clear, cold sky, the weight of his touch still warm and solid on her shoulder. “It’s fine, Rey,” he assures her. “We got enough.”

She takes one last look up at where atmosphere turns to space, clenching her jaw tight and swearing that next time, whenever they meet again in the field, will be the last.

 

 

When she finally returns to the _Falcon_ , Rey can’t sleep. She shifts restlessly in her bunk, kicking her thin sheet off before pulling it up again, flipping this way and that. She tells herself it’s the sting of losing her target, the frustration of having come so close with nothing to show for it. But as the hours wear on and her thoughts start blurring at the edges, she realizes it’s not just that.

It’s also the way Phasma’s flushed skin had looked in the half-shadow of the courtyard, the way her eyes had struck her when she’d ripped off the helmet. It was how powerful she’d felt beneath her, even in loss. The memories should not have been enticing; there was no question that the Stormtrooper would kill her given the slightest chance or slipup on Rey’s part, and nothing about the sweat and strain and fraught adrenaline of their fight had been anywhere near friendly, much less… _sexual_. She’s the enemy, for stars’ sake, and rightly so. The things she’d read in her dossier horrify her, and the vengeful curiosity speaking with Finn had sparked carries no room in it for forgiveness. But—

But.

Rey bites one fist and curls in on herself in the darkness, confused and furious and ashamed of herself, and slips a tentative hand past her underwear.

 

 

\---

 

 

The next time she encounters the Stormtrooper is also the last. Rey keeps her promises like the desert keeps bones.

She takes a breath of humid air and tugs the cloth obscuring her nose and mouth tighter, pushing between the crowds swarming through the incense and herb-choked nightlife district. Her hair is pulled back in a simple ponytail, and the dark, close-fitting hooded jacket and pants she wears are not her own. The risk of discovery in this booming frontier town is high for anyone with an Order-issued warrant out on them, positioned as it is at the edge of the regime’s territory. She’s changed her appearance as best she can to compensate, but every passing glance and brush past a stranger sends her nerves skittering. An argument between two men behind her rises above the bustle and she hustles faster, the trampled black dirt scattering from beneath her boots as she dodges between traders, civilians, and dressed-down Order soldiers alike.

It’s a cool and patchily clouded night, with an edge of dewy dampness that promises to have the entire tangled sprawl covered in condensation by morning. All the perfume still fails to cover up the rich scent of ferns and moss and green things in cracks here, water breeding life wherever it can. But she won’t be around to see sunup, not if this goes well. Rey rounds a corner and pauses, casting about until she finds the establishment Leia had shown her a holo of back on base, two days ago.

She’s honestly a bit surprised that intelligence ops had traced Phasma here, using a leftover string of personal code left unsecured on one of the transport’s consoles to begin a worming, circuitous excavation of encryption keys from Order comm satellites. Eventually, a snippet of data they’d gleaned had revealed her name, a time period, and these coordinates.

It’s a bar, relatively unassuming and barely on the proper side of seedy. It takes up the lowest floor of one of the many prefab durasteel structures dominating the town’s architecture, moonlight painting its moss-drowned faces it in stark blacks and whites where it isn’t illuminated by neon holos. The Order’s hexagon glows bright red where it’s projected from the side of the door along with local advertisements, indicating that they cater to the armed forces. It isn’t comforting. She wishes she weren’t going in sans ‘saber and alone, with Finn far off on a mission of his own and Poe standing by at the outskirts of town, but she has to be for this to work.

Two women, one clearly military despite her civvies, tumble out the door and past the bouncers as she draws closer through the night. Light and music spill out behind them, casting them in silhouette. They’re laughing tipsily and pawing at each other, one’s collar half-open and the other’s hand creeping along the small of her back. A lump hitches in Rey’s throat when it suddenly hits her just what kind of bar this must be, and then, even worse, what it means that Phasma should be here. That hadn’t been in the briefing. She shoves the thought violently out of her head. Maybe women being with women is just… accepted here. Common. Something one might see at any cantina. Nothing to make a big deal about.

Focus on the mission.

Rey drags her eyes off the women and skirts around them as they stumble past, slipping in before the door closes again with the aid of a minor Force suggestion of unimportance at the two burly guards.

And then she’s in.

The first thing that hits her is the muskiness, a stark contrast from the cool freshness of the open skies outside. It’s raucous and flooded with upbeat music, a mix of civilian and military women drinking the night away almost aggressively, nothing like the resigned desperation at Niima Outpost or the colorfully neutral chaos of Maz’s. They’re all Human, for one, and Rey belatedly realizes that she hasn’t seen a single Sullustan or Twi’lek or Rodian or any other alien since she touched down here. She instinctively tries to make herself smaller as she pads over the smooth floor, scanning both for a place to sit unnoticed and for the Captain, if they’d gotten the intelligence right.

For the first half hour, Rey just watches. The leather of the booth seat she hunkers in is too soft and the taste of whatever drink she’s ordered burns her tongue, bitter and barky and entirely unpalatable, but she has to blend in. She takes small sips at wide intervals in an attempt to dull its effects, her mask-cloth removed and stuffed hesitantly in her hip bag. Several women begin to stand out to her in the crowd as the minutes tick by, too stationary and hard-faced to be mere customers. Bodyguards? They’re dressed to blend in and are doing a mostly decent job at it, but they’ve got the same stiff little tells that Unkar Plutt’s hired muscle had sometimes showed.

Rey turns back to her drink, swirling the little fruit skewer that had come with it around and around. She’s never had a desire to imbibe, not really, the habit seeming exorbitant and wasteful even for celebrations when water or food could’ve been purchased with the same money. Besides, bars and cantinas have never been the most comfortable of places for her, something she’d learned quickly as a young thing on Jakku. Luke has warned her about the particular dangers of lost inhibition and judgment for Force users but never forbidden her from drinking, trusting their shared hardscrabble origins to put them on the same page. Save for a few sips here and there with Black Squadron, his faith in that had so far been sound.

The glass is three quarters empty when someone slips into the tiny booth with her and leans close.

“Hey there, sweetheart. You alone?”

Rey startles, snapping up from the mesmerizing blue swirl and cursing the alcohol. She should’ve been watching for her mark, should’ve noticed this stranger’s approach. The woman’s knee brushes against her own under the table. Flecks of blue and white light spin over her and the rest of the bench, like a galaxy. She’s tall and sandy skinned, her black hair pulled back in a dense puff, a truly winning smile stretched across her face.

“I-” Rey gapes, panic flaring in her chest. “I’m just here for a drink.” Does this woman know her face? Does she- but no, she realizes as several empty seconds tick past, she doesn’t. There’s a high blush and a coy look in her eye. She’s _flirting_.

“If you say so,” the woman teases, her voice honey-sweet with insinuation. “Can I buy you a fresh one?”

“Uh,” Rey flusters, flushing deep and hot, casting frantically about the room for an escape. She’s not bad looking, but Rey isn’t here for- for _that_. She’s got work to do.

That’s when she spots Phasma, one well-groomed head of straight blond hair moving through the crowd at the bar. The low yellow light from the bottle shelves glints off of it and Rey flares her perception with the Force just to be sure that she’s pegged the right person. The Captain jostles up to the bartender, people moving out of her way when they feel her bulk, and then Rey realizes: nobody recognizes the woman here, not without that chromed armor. She’s just another stiff-necked uniform on leave, taking advantage of anonymity.

But Rey knows her face. She’d volunteered for this mission on those grounds, and it’s been burned onto the back of her skull for a month and a half now.

“I’m sorry,” she sputters, and across the table the woman’s expression falls. “I mean, thank you for the offer, but. I- I have to go.” She clatters her glass down and slips from the booth, escaping into the crowd before another word can be exchanged. Focus past the drink. Get the job done however you have to. She slips the NN-14 covertly from her bag and slowly weaves through the mass of revelers and spilled glasses to the bar, giving the closest bodyguard a wide berth.

Phasma is leaning cockily up against it in conversation with the bartender, her arms crossed and hips cocked and one foot hooked behind her other heel. Rey slows to a creep, swallows, and sidles up through several more tightly packed bodies until she’s directly behind her.

“Don’t make a scene,” she murmurs, and rests one hand casually on the Captain’s upper arm. She presses the blaster solidly at the small of her back, obscured by both their bodies from even the closest observer’s eyes. Rey catches the subsequent elbow jab while it’s still only a twitch and grinds the muzzle harder into the muscles clearly evident under her shirt. She’d been expecting the lightning quick startle-comprehend-incapacitate reaction, and adrenaline stamps out any effects of tipsiness on her hold.

Phasma goes stock-still at the preemptive block and cranes her head warily, just enough to catch Rey’s face glaring up past her shoulder. The woman’s eyes widen, and Rey forces herself to smile up at her. It comes out thin-lipped.

“Don’t call them,” she orders. “I know you have bodyguards. I’m just a stranger, no one important.”

Her expression hardens to ice at that, and Rey is glad that no one beyond a foot away can hear their conversation over the peppy music’s bassline. Phasma’s face is just as sharp-cut and captivatingly unforgiving as it had been when Rey had wrenched her helmet off, save for the high flush of alcohol glowing on her cheeks and the halo of light in her hair from the bar. A lump grows in her throat and suddenly she’s cursing herself for thinking that the animosity and the mission would be enough to keep her shame from surging back up.

“This won’t work, girl.” It’s just on the edge of slurred.

“Go,” she directs, barely keeping it together out of sheer determination. “Out the back.” Phasma laughs, stunned and disbelieving. It’s deep and throaty and Rey can feel it vibrating through her blaster’s grip, but it soon dies as the Captain’s expression drops again.

“And if I don’t?”

“Don’t test me,” she grits.

“This isn’t some cantina on Jakku, with bolt holes for the rats. I don’t know a back exit.”

“Up, then.” Rey false-smiles and jerks her head, her other hand still tense on the cords of Phasma’s bulky arm, towards a roped off stairwell around to the side of the bar. “Make the guards stay here.” Leaving through the front isn’t an option now that she’s already tricked the bouncers once and has Phasma and her entourage to keep in check, too. The roof would complicate extraction, but it would have to do.

Astonishingly, after a long, tense moment, the Captain complies. She waves briskly and the bodyguards turn away, at least those that Rey had sight of. She prods Phasma forward, ending up hanging off the back of the larger woman’s corded arm. It works wondrously to conceal fact that she’s holding a firearm to _the_ senior Stormtrooper officer in an Order-friendly establishment, but to everyone around them, it looks like something… else. Rey’s cheeks burn in embarrassment and anger at the few hot, dragging glances they get from other women in the throng. Phasma smells like clean laundry and light sweat in the proximity, and she hates it.

They get up the stairs unquestioned by the staff with a little help from the Force, ascending three flights that get progressively sparser before slamming out a heavy door onto the wide roof. There’s a moss-choked ventilation hood several paces in front of them, and Rey immediately shoves Phasma away into it. It’s overcast now and mostly quiet in the cool humidity, the area lit only by one halo light outside the door they emerged from, around which snapping, buzzing insect creatures swarm. Her feet sink slightly beneath her into the ubiquitous green and it feels like flowers are choking her lungs.

“Hands out,” she orders, barrel leveled. “Give it up, Phasma. You got lucky before. It won’t happen again.” This time, she’s brought binders. Once she’s got them on her, all it will take is a single call for extraction and this will be over. It can’t happen soon enough. Part of her wonders if her sudden impatience is colored by the alcohol, too.

 “I’m honestly surprised you found me here, little Jedi,” the Captain says, and Rey can’t tell whether her sing-song tone is mocking or just drunk. She straightens up and turns to face her and Rey _despises_ it, everything about that cool, haughty look and the way her body moves, close-packed and easy but with a healthy dash of looseness from whatever the bar had been serving. “This is a risky town for a girl like you.”

“Do it,” Rey snarls, angry now. “Don’t make me ask twice.”

“Or you’ll what?”

“ _Hands_ ,” she demands again, and cuts into Phasma’s space. She manages to break her guard and pin her against the vent, left hand on a wrist, the blaster pressed up into the soft bits beneath her jaw. Her reactions are definitely slow, but then again, Rey thinks, so are her own.

There’s a long, breathlessly tense moment, and then a terribly calm smile breaks on Phasma’s face.

“You won’t shoot me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But I do,” She chuckles, a strange light in her eyes. “If you couldn’t kill me before, you won’t be able to do it now. You’re _soft_ , girl. It’s no wonder the traitor likes you.”

The insult digs deep, both personally and on Finn’s behalf, and yet all of Rey’s hot frustration suddenly dies. If Phasma is what hardened looks like, she’ll take soft any day. And soft sure as all hells doesn’t mean weak. If she wants to do this the hard way, then fine. There’s no one around to interfere on the Captain’s behalf, and Rey’s already beaten her once. She can do it again.

Her knee slams into Phasma’s gut, but the woman had partially anticipated it and doesn’t stagger nearly as much as she’d like. Unfazed, Rey moves to snap the butt of her blaster at her head. She’s quickly moving down her list of acceptable incapacitation methods.

She never makes contact, because Phasma is already whipping up her free hand with its knuckles half-curled for a throat strike. She’s forced to duck back and disengage to escape the taller woman’s reach but she doesn’t stop coming, pushing off the vent and sending Rey another step back away from the door and the light. She throws her blaster up again—a shot to an arm or leg would do, if she truly has to—only to have her wrist caught and twisted until the weapon goes flying out of her grasp to thud somewhere in the dark.

Rey shouts as pain spirals up her arm, staggering past Phasma’s side with the grab’s inertia. The Captain wheels around to follow through without letting go but Rey’s already recovered, just enough to duck and slam her heel hard into back of the woman’s knee. It drops both of them down into the yielding moss, Phasma crumpling with a grunt dragging Rey along. The hold on her arm is easy to break once they’re down, and Rey snaps away as fast as she can. Phasma is just rising, but a sharp strike to her sternum lays her out again.

It all takes less than fifteen seconds.

“Stay down,” Rey grits between pants, scrambling to straddle the gasping woman and grabbing for the binders in her hip satchel with one hand. She gets them all the way out before the adrenaline clears and she fully registers the position they’ve ended up in for a second time now. Her mouth goes dry and her neck burns hot, and she fumbles opening the cuffs. Her legs are spread wide to accommodate the hard breadth of Phasma’s hips, and she can feel the muscles of her abdomen fluttering as she works through the shock of the blow. She seems to be coming back to herself fast, though. Perhaps it had been more glancing than intended, or she’s just as metallic underneath her armor as she was while encased in it.

Rey grimaces and leans her weight down one of the woman’s wrists, who coughs one final time and regains her breath, though shallowly. She doesn’t want to think these infuriating thoughts about Phasma anymore. She just wants to get this _over_ with, to load her on a ship back to the Resistance where she’ll give up her secrets and they’ll be one step closer to winning this damn war-

The Captain is staring at her with a strange, calculating expression, the dim edge of the halo lamp’s illumination making her eyes and hair shine against the deepness of the moss she’s splayed on.

“What are you looking at?” Rey demands, and drops in to cuff her first unresisting arm.

Phasma snaps up and kisses her.

Everything grinds to a stop: her thoughts, her body, her breath, everything. Phasma’s lips are hot and wet and smooth where they roam over her own paralyzed ones, and she can barely make sense of the shock. Phasma is _kissing_ her. Phasma is- is putting a _hand on her thigh-_

“What the _fuck!”_ Rey jerks back with a gasp, appalled and furious at the woman but also at herself for how long it had taken to snap out of it.

She panics. It’s the drink, she thinks desperately, muddling her reactions. She needs to extricate herself _immediately,_ she needs to- to do _something_. She’s suddenly scrambling, up and off and away from the damned Stormtrooper.

But Phasma’s hands are on her, fumbling and grabbing and _flipping_ , pinning her down hard into the moss by her biceps. She writhes wildly, trying to bite and kick, but Phasma’s too big and too heavy, and so she succeeds at nothing but ripping up the plant life around them.

The Captain grunts with effort as she bears down and suddenly she remembers that she’s a Jedi, for stars’ sake, no longer a too-small girl hitting puberty on a cutthroat planet, and she can free herself using the Force whenever she’d like. Her fear dies, replaced with a rush of angry potential at her fingertips, of power. It’s pulling, and all she has to do is push through the sheer shock of all this and _grab_ it— 

“I thought so.”

The husky note in Phasma’s voice snaps her back.

 “You-” The words hitch lividly in her throat. “ _What?”_

“You find me attractive.” Her eyes sparkle with cruel amusement even as she winces on an inhale, and it feels like the bottom of Rey’s stomach has dropped out. “Or am I mistaken?”

“Get off me.”

“Am I?”

Rey can’t form another word for the rage in her chest, so she just grimaces for a moment before she screws her eyes shut and swallows, face nearly searing off with shame. Her hands curl into fists. She does. Stars, she does, and she _shouldn’t_. She _hates this_.

“Get off!” she growls, and jerks again. The Captain nearly loses her grip.

“Do you really want me to?” There’s an infuriating curl in her tone, emboldened by the lack of denial.

“ _Yes._ Or I’ll _make_ you.”

Phasma hesitates, just enough for the anger to snap together into a sharp point in Rey’s breast that feels burstingly _dangerous_ , and something in Phasma’s expression suddenly shocks into retreat.

She releases Rey’s arms like they’re on fire, scooting haphazardly up and off. Rey scrambles out from beneath her and coils to spring up, but doesn’t yet; the other woman remains crouching, and so she focuses on getting her pounding heart back under control instead. Phasma’s right hand hovers up between them, the cuff there successfully locked around her wrist with its partner dangling down, open. Her other hand clutches at her chest. She’s still struggling a bit for breath, flinching ever so slightly on every other inhale.

The Captain swallows. Opens her mouth, pauses. And then, with only a touch of fear, her icy eyes peering up determinedly from beneath her lashes, she speaks.

“I have a proposition.”

“No. Nothing you do will convince me to let you get away again,” Rey snaps, stern-faced. She hopes she’s mistaken about the sudden lurch in her gut because this is all _wrong_ , especially after the way she’d come on to her. Her fingers twitch to the beacon in her jacket pocket, her signal, her out. She could use it right now and be off-planet in fifteen minutes. But hells below forbid, she hesitates. Some morbid part of her is _curious_.

Phasma loosely tilts her head, and Rey realizes just how intoxicated the woman might actually be. It hadn’t shown nearly as much during their fight, but it certainly is now.

“You seem intelligent enough. You know why I was here tonight. What I wanted.”

“Yes.” Rey bristles. She’s not an idiot, and doesn’t take well to condescension. It’s more than obvious. Buying alcohol, the way the Captain’s hips had cocked as she’d leaned on the bar, how her shirt clung and left tantalizingly little to the imagination. She knows.

“Because,” Phasma huffs, “I could be offering.”

Rey’s heart palpitates at that, and she sees the Stormtrooper smirk knowingly in the half light at the small amount of power she’s just won back in this tense, surreal exchange. The whole situation has gone entirely sideways so quickly that Rey still feels like she’s catching up to herself. Seeing Phasma exposed, defensive, and yet _salacious_ like this is _doing_ things to her, she grudgingly acknowledges. Shockingly inappropriate low, aching things that should’ve stayed shuttered up in the small hours aboard the _Falcon,_ where she could reasonably assume the half-fantasies she’d entertained would never be real and didn’t matter. She wants to scream.

“You can’t _possibly_ be serious,” she spits instead. A pregnant pause, and then: “Offering, or _taking?_ You’d just as soon kill me.”

Phasma’s face darkens. “I would, little Jedi. But I know when all that’s left is to make the most of a loss.”

“Do you?”

“I can’t breathe well enough put up a proper fight. And I know you have potential you haven’t used. I’ve overheard as much from-”

“Don’t say his name,” Rey cuts in, voice sharp. Phasma shuts her mouth, expression calculating with a hint of haze. Rey takes a deep, steadying breath and holds it and then, somewhere on the shuddery exhale, slides into an unstable decision. It’s terrifying and exhilarating and feels dangerously like a _pull_.

But there’s just enough tingly-sore fog in her now that it doesn’t seem like a problem.

“Hands,” Rey finally demands, a tumble of words. “If you want this, then you’ll give me your hands. Prove to me that you know you’ve really lost.”

Phasma hesitates, eyeing the smaller woman’s open, outstretched palm against the mossy tableau. This, Rey knows, is where it will either be revealed as a last ditch bid to escape, or as something horribly honest, something contradictory and intoxicant-fueled between two people who’d exchanged far more unrestrained blows than words in the three whole times they’ve met.

The pause seems to go on forever.

And then, slowly, tentatively, Phasma extends her hands. The look in her eyes is hungry and defiant, but she’s giving way.

Rey swallows.

If she’s really doing this, she doesn’t want to drag it out. She leans in and tugs Phasma closer, snapping the other cuff closed on her opposite wrist. With the binders locked, she’s only got about ten centimeters of play between them. They’re so close to each other now that she can feel the huff of unfamiliar breath against her dew-chilled cheeks. It smells faintly of alcohol.

“Not a word of this to anyone,” she hisses, and then realizes that a thread of unchecked Force had woven through into the command. The compulsion feels dirty, but she can’t take it back. Her thoughts suddenly flit to Finn, and Poe, and everyone else who fights so hard for freedom from the Order’s shadow. She’s just acquiesced to keeping a horrible secret, she realizes, one she’ll never, ever be able to share. There’s still one final chance to call this off- and yet.

She knows she won’t take it.

“I swear it upon my soldier’s honor.” Phasma’s eyes are intense, her skin and hair shining barely against the backdrop of the damply muffled night.

Rey bites her lip.

“…Okay.” It’s a murmur, barely audible over the clacking of the insects around the halo light. Rey barely has a moment to feel a twisted kinship with them before Phasma leans quickly in and they’re kissing again.

A surprised little moan punches from her lips only to hit Phasma’s. The Captain is firm and insistent, ruthless, coaxing her to kiss back but still a little sloppy. Her bound hands fist into Rey’s shirt as they overbalance and she’s forced to catch herself in the moss, her fingers sinking into the loam in tandem with the slide of Phasma’s knee up along her leg towards her groin. She’s straddling her, half-kneeling and bent over, but Rey refuses to lie down, not yet. Instead she returns the biting kiss twofold, pushing back and knotting one hand in the short hair at Phasma’s nape.

She’s done this before, sure. Pawing hands and nipping mouths with other scrappy girls back on Jakku, few and far between. But it’s been so long, now, ever since she got swept up with BB-8 and the Resistance and the people who’ve truly become family to her, more so than the parents she barely remembers from her childhood. And fuck, against all sane reason, she really does want this.

They finally topple over. Rey’s glad for the moss when it catches her back cushions the impact, despite the wet creep of dew through her clothes. Phasma follows her down without respite and braces herself heavily on her chest, her tongue involved in the kiss now, too. Rey again counters equally, moaning little breaths emanating from both of them that only make Rey’s fingers wind tighter. The Captain hisses at the tug.

Rey groans when pressure finally bears up against her crotch and she breaks the kiss to arch back and flex, her legs bending up to seek better purchase for rolling her hips up onto Phasma’s firm thigh. But _fuck,_ the angles are all wrong to give her the rub she needs. She groans. They’re locked together, her grip on the woman keeping her head bent close to her chest. She can feel her breath heaving and the little winces punctuating it like staccato notes.

“Come on,” Rey growls, breathy. “I thought you wanted something quick.” Phasma just gives her own roll of her hips and huffs a smirk somewhere beyond the obscuring curtain of her fringe, clearly getting more out of Rey’s leg between her thighs than Rey is getting out of hers.

Thankfully, she doesn’t tease for long. She straightens slightly and fumbles with Rey’s jacket, pulling it open and getting the first two buttons of her shirt undone before she loses patience and just rucks the whole thing up. Rey’s grip moves from Phasma’s neck to her shoulders as the woman works, closing hard over the ripple and flex of the muscles there. The night air is cold on her exposed belly, and she shivers when Phasma touches it.

“Kriff,” the Captain swears as she slides her hands up and then under her chest band, the old Imperial curse strange on Rey’s ears. “Have you thought about this? About me?”

“Shut up,” Rey gasps, bucking again as Phasma’s thumbs swipe over her nipples. “Talking wasn’t part of the deal.”

She reaches up with one hand and grabs her hair once more, pulling her down into a silencing kiss that’s more teeth than anything else before tugging her head to the side, arching up to go after the pale length of the woman’s neck. It’s all Phasma can do to brace herself against Rey, the binders preventing her from putting a hand out onto the roof for stability. She gasps, rutting urgently again on Rey’s bent leg as she mouths her way up behind an ear.

“I think you have,” Phasma hitches under the assault, “thought about this.” Her mouth is slack, her lips wet and dark in the yellow light when Rey pulls back for a moment.

“Speak for yourself,” she deflects, and nips particularly hard at the base of her jaw. She’s rewarded with a gasp, one that cuts off any response.

The Captain can’t have. Could she? It’s intoxicating, to entertain the idea that her shame is a shared one. That they’d _both_ suffered unwanted, compromising thoughts about the enemy. For her it’s always been vague, a hot, abstract need paired with snatches of how the woman’s bulky body had flexed while pinned and a sobering dose of animosity. What might Phasma have entertained?

Rey groans and rolls her hips insistently at the thought, her fingers weaving tighter at the Captain’s nape. Phasma hisses and tugs back against the hold, gnawed sensitive. Rey lets her go. She pushes herself upright and sucks in a stuttering breath that slips into a brief coughing fit, her expression contorted, and Rey suddenly realizes the biting wasn’t the only reason why she’d withdrawn.

“I- shit,” she stutters. She hates the woman but she doesn’t want to actively cause her _pain_ during this. That isn’t _okay_ , no matter who it is.

“I’m fine,” Phasma interrupts. She takes a couple steadying breaths and then grinds down again, canting her hips along Rey’s thigh and biting her lip. Rey groans at the sight. She’s clearly focused on chasing her own pleasure, their shared point of contact hot and damp. Phasma clutches at Rey’s breasts and she arches, face still hot with forgotten shame. This time, she finds, the angle is better.

Rey skims her hands down to Phasma’s ass and rolls with her, receiving a pleased noise in return. The planes of her body are taut and filled out, all power, and she still can’t let go of the last bits of disbelief that this is actually happening. After a moment the Captain shifts her weight slightly and looks down properly, expectant.

“Are you just going to lie there, little Jedi? Is this all you could imagine?”

A flash of uninhibited annoyance goes through Rey, because she isn’t just lying there, but she knows what Phasma wants and bites back a comment. She brings one hand around flat on her firm abdomen, low, and slips her fingers just beneath the woman’s waistband. There’s a bed of coarse hair and then, as she dips lower, wet silky heat.

Phasma gasps and trembles under the touch, slipping and adjusting her cuffed hands on Rey’s chest as she curls downward. “Kriff, yes.”

It doesn’t take long until the woman is keening with every rock. The angle is hell on Rey’s wrist but she sticks with it, circling and rubbing Phasma’s clit until she finally finds what really sets her off. The woman stutters, then, hips hitching and her head falling to Rey’s chest between her hands, one fisted up and the other braced at the bottom of Rey’s ribs. It’s a small, quiet orgasm, but when Phasma looks up again her jaw is loose and her eyes shot wide. She’s still trying to regain her fleeting breath.

She withdraws her fingers and wipes the slickness off onto her trousers. After a moment the Captain shifts back, the movement grinding the heat at Rey’s crotch back to burning again now that her wrist isn’t painfully twisted anymore. She can’t help but chase Phasma’s thigh, grabbing hard at the sides of the woman’s shirt and worrying furiously at her lip. Even so, a needy little noise slips out. She’s lost, now. All that’s left in her is want.

A slow smile curls onto Phasma’s face, and then all of a sudden she’s off her chest and undoing her belt and pulling her pants down and _fuck_ her skin tingles when those hands skim up her exposed thighs, slipping down through her hair until they find the evidence of just how aroused she is right now.

“Get on with it,” Rey pants, protesting the slow circle Phasma takes up around her clit. She slides one hand up catch a chill-hardened nipple between two fingers in compensation, and savors the jolt when she presses her still exposed breast up. Her other hand threads its insistent way into Phasma’s hair again.

“You’re even better on your back than I’d imagined,” Phasma goads, and dips down to tease at her labia. Rey frantically nods _yes_ , staring resolutely up at the clouds where they’re breaking, just enough to let a sliver of moonlight line their edges. The woman hum-laughs, and then pushes in with two fingers.

Rey’s legs tense and flex around where Phasma kneels between them and she moans at the feeling of fullness, the heat of it all, and then again when she starts rocking her hand ever so slightly in and out, still fucking _teasing_. Her other hand is pressing firmly at the inside of Rey’s thigh, locked close to its partner but playing whatever part it can. Phasma finally curls her fingers up and Rey jolts, bending up for a moment at the pressure before flopping back again.

“Tell me- tell me what you thought about,” she demands breathlessly.

“You.” The word sounds cruel. “I’ve wanted to have you under me like this.”

“Like-” her air catches.

“Pinned. I’ve wanted to take you apart with just my hands, after everything you did. And to have you _enjoy_ it, kriff, wouldn’t that just be rich-“

“Fuck-“

“You _are_ enjoying this, aren’t you, little Jedi.”

“Come _on!_ ”

Phasma slams in, and it knocks Rey’s air out for a moment. She squeezes her eyes shut and arches back, keening, trying to adjust to the rhythmic waves of sensation that just threaten on the edge of overwhelming. She can’t help but twist her grip in Phasma’s hair at the same time as she tugs her own and she knows she’s loud now, so loud, but caring is beyond her faculties right now. Phasma smirks, and then she’s leaning down to her hipbone and nibbling and _biting_ , sucking a bruise into the thin skin there.

Rey’s hand flies from Phasma’s head to her crotch because she suddenly needs _release_ , her fingers slipping beside her clit and desperately working to bring herself off. It’s an unbearably slow crest, flitting between too much and not _quite_ there until she finally gets herself in sync with Phasma’s driving pace and then she’s tensing and bucking and _riding_ it.

She’s never had an orgasm quite like this.

When the flood ebbs, Rey’s chest is heaving. Phasma doesn’t pull out immediately, keeping on with minute little thrusts that draw involuntary aftershocks out of her as she comes down. It feels like she’s floating when she pushes up on her elbows and grabs Phasma’s wrist to force her to stop. But then the endorphins start to fade and she’s suddenly cold and the moss has soaked water through what clothes she’s still got on and she’s just let _Captain Phasma fuck her_.

It’s sobering like a slap to the face.

“Fuck,” she swears, and sits up.

Phasma smirks lazily and reaches out, but Rey shoves her back. She flops onto the green with a displeased, half-coughing punch of an exhale and stays there. Rey jerks her breastband and shirt back down while scrambling up, then tugs her pants back where they belong. She’s buckling her belt when the Captain speaks again.

“Regrets?”

“This never happened,” she snaps, and casts about for her NN-14. The break in the clouds has grown large now, washing the entire roof in a blank white moonlight. All the need, all the _pull,_ has vanished. Now it’s just her and a Stormtrooper and the insect-creatures still bouncing loudly off the yellow bulb strip, clacking over the low hum of the district. She feels used, but in a vague, uncertain way that has any clean assignation of blame slipping from her fingers.

Phasma’s skin glows ghostlike where her forearms rest, cuffed, over the black of her shirt. Her face fares little better, half-turned and watching with hair like a halo. A flash of reflected silver in the moss several meters away reveals the blaster, so Rey straightens her jacket and pads over and scoops it up. It goes in her belt, and she takes a breath.

She locks eyes with Phasma and hits the locator beacon holstered next to the sidearm. Phasma fixes her back, her brows drawn and eyes hard, an edge of teeth visible where they press hard into her lower lip.

The comm in her jacket pocket crackles to life almost immediately.

“Falcon One, this is Black Leader, do you copy?”

“This is Falcon One, I copy. I’m ready for pickup, but there’s been a slight change of plans.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised.” The amusement in his tone is obvious. “What is it this time?”

“I’m still at the bar, on the roof. I hope you’re not already bringing the speeder.”

“I’ve got your coordinates. Is there room to land the shuttle?”

“Should be.”

“Copy that, I’ll be there in five. Black Leader, out.”

Rey stares at the device for a moment after Poe cuts off, and then stuffs it back in her pocket. The ventilation hood is only a pace away, and in the opposite direction from where Phasma’s laid out. She’s too jittery. She slides down onto her haunches with her back braced up against it and sighs.

“Your look like a mess,” comes the inevitable comment.

“Shut up.”

Phasma only laughs bitterly. It quickly turns to sharp, full-bodied coughing, however, forcing her to roll away onto her side to quell the pain. Rey reaches up and drags her hands through her mussed hair, pulling out the tie and digging her fingers deep into the scalp above her temples. The tugging pressure succeeds in centering her somewhat, stilling the aftershocks of hormones and nervous energy.

When it quiets and she glances back up, Phasma has rolled to look at her. Whatever expression she wore before is wiped away by a grimace and another small cough, but Rey knows it wasn’t a friendly one. The atmosphere has sobered, literally, for both of them.

“Don’t worry,” she promises. “You’ll see a medic soon.”

“You know I don’t want your meditechs,” Phasma growls.

“Too bad. You’re worth more to us alive than dead.”

Her expression folds back into true ice then, a colder, sharper version of the challenge she’d worn on her face when Rey had torn her helmet off almost two months ago. She can see the snarl twitching underneath it, ready to spit and snap, and how that energy coils down into the Captain’s limbs.

“Don’t,” Rey warns, weary. She draws Han’s old blaster and levels it from her crouch, almost nonchalantly. “I’m not above shooting a knee out if I have to, at this point.”

Phasma releases a scornful little _tch_ and lets her head fall to the moss in defeat. The rest of her slowly sags deeper after it, everything still and quiet in the damp night air until Poe descends with the shuttle and kicks up a landing wind, tearing at their hair and clothes and more than explaining any dishevelment away.

Even then, Phasma doesn’t try to get back up.

 

 

\---

 

 

She’s rolled halfway under the X-Wing’s engine when Finn taps her foot, twice on the sole like he always does, to let her know he’s there. It’s unnecessary, of course: Rey can always feel when he’s nearby. She smiles and pushes herself free from the machinery, out into the quiet dimness of the old hangar.

“Hey,” he greets. One of the creeper’s wheels squeaks as it loses inertia, leaving her looking up at him from the middle of the floor.

“Hey.”

“You fix it yet?”

Rey laughs. “This rustbucket? I would’ve stripped it for scraps weeks ago, except that Luke won’t let me. He’s got an attachment.”

She accepts the hand Finn offers, coming to her feet and swiping perspiration off her brow with the back of her forearm. She can feel the oily smear it leaves. Last month had been chilly enough that Pava and Iolo couldn’t laugh at her for wearing two scarves, but today a beating heat penetrates even under the crumbling roof of this outlying old building. This weather brings with it the comfort of familiarity for Rey, even though the idea of it _changing_ is still deeply odd to her.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” she asks, turning to Finn and dusting off as best she can. “I thought you were busy on the main base today.”

“I was supposed to be,” he admits, and they stroll out together past the massive bay doors. The turf outside is low and green, the ground long since far too weathered and rocky to serve as a landing field anymore. The flat quickly tumbles away down an open slope to the sun-glinted lake on which Luke keeps his hut, the rest of the Resistance’s infrastructure centered a klick and a half away to the east. It’s quiet, wide-open land, punctuated with thrumming insects and the occasional animal call.

It’s the sort of place where, if Rey tries hard enough, she can trick herself into believing there isn’t a war.

“Did something happen?” she asks.

“They’re closing Phasma’s questioning today. I thought you might not hear, since you’ve been stuck with Luke so much recently. She’s being transferred to permanent holding up on the northern continent.”

“Oh.” _Good,_ Rey thinks. She finds a seat on one of the pale old boulders strewn about and looks up at the sky for a long moment, then to Finn where he’s standing with his hands shoved in his pockets. The sun is warm on the back of her neck, and makes his skin glow. “Are you alright? You seem quiet.”

He laughs and turns. “Yeah, I’m fine. More than fine, actually. It feels like I’ve finally got real closure for something. There’s so much of this war left to fight, but Phasma’s not a part of it anymore. Nobody’s ever gonna follow orders from her again.”

Rey smiles and reaches up for his arm, finding his fingers with hers when they slip out of his pocket. “I’m glad, Finn,” she says, and gives them a squeeze. “We’re going to beat them.”

Down by the lake, a figure emerges from the little hut and waves up at the two of them. Rey drops Finn’s hand and waves back, pushing off the rock and onto her feet. Luke wants her to come back and finish the day’s training before it gets too late into the afternoon.

“I should go,” she apologizes. “He gets grumpy when I make him wait too long.”

“Go ahead,” Finn smiles. “I need to get back too. I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”

“Yeah. And tell Poe he isn’t wriggling out of cooking for us again, not this time.”

“Will do,” he says with a jaunty little salute, and swings his leg over the speeder he’d come in on.

Finn leaves in a cloud of dirt, zipping away back east. The smile slowly slips from Rey’s face as he goes, and she turns from the vehicle’s trail to stare out past the boulders and the lake and the rolling hills far, far away along the horizon instead. Some creature riding the updrafts screeches faintly, and another slow bead of sweat rolls from her upper lip into her mouth.

She hasn’t told Luke.

The Dark feels like an undertow, lodged somewhere deep inside herself where her she can’t free it, and when it tugs, it tugs _everything_. The training has helped to keep it weak, and the worst of it, the razor-sharp rage, Luke knows about already. He works somberly to give her the tools to staunch the flow herself when she can, to know it for what it truly is.

But ever since Phasma it’s been catching, snagging and pulling in different, quieter ways. Ones Rey sometimes doesn’t realize until hours or days have gone by with a strange, restless feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knows the pull is born of desire and nursed by her own mistakes, but she won’t let it win. She’s her own person, no matter what the Force tries to say, light or dark. _She’s_ the one who chooses, and she chooses _this._

Leia, whose arms had felt like a home. Han, his trust in her still solid at her hip, even now. Chewie. Poe. And Finn. Stars, _Finn_ , so kind and full of hope for what could be, despite it all.

Rey takes a deep breath. The day smells earthy, her own body salty and alive. Luke beckons again, and she suddenly wants nothing more than to dip her feet into the cool water of the lake, to feel the fine sand of the reed-framed beach slipping between her toes.

“I’m coming!” she shouts, and begins picking a path to join him at the shore.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](https://sundogsailor.tumblr.com/).


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